Selma activist Faya Rose Toure arrested after speaking out against city land donation for Nathan Bedford Forrest monument

Faya Rose Toure, shown during a protest earlier this year in Montgomery, Ala., is a longtime opponent of a monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest in Selma. (Mike Cason/mcason@al.com)

MONTGOMERY, Alabama --- Longtime political activist Faya Rose Toure was jailed Tuesday night after speaking out against the city of Selma donating land for a monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest, according to Toure’s husband, state Sen. Hank Sanders.

Forrest was a confederate general who fought in the Battle of Selma and was the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Sanders said Toure spent Tuesday night in the Dallas County Jail and was released today after the charge of disorderly conduct was dropped. Sanders said Selma Mayor George Evans said he wanted her removed from the city council meeting Tuesday night but had not intended for her to be charged.
The senator said Toure, also known as Rose Sanders, was arrested by Selma police and later transferred to the county jail. Before the charge was dropped and she was released, Toure had refused to pay the $1,000 bond.

“I will stay in jail as long as it takes,” Toure said in a news release from Saving Ourselves: Movement of Justice and Democracy, a coalition of civil rights groups that Toure is active in.

Sanders said there is already a small monument to Forrest on city owned property in Old Live Oak Cemetery.

Plans called for a larger monument at the cemetery, Sanders said. Sanders said for the monument to be on city property was an endorsement of what Forrest stood for.
“That’s just unacceptable for someone who built the KKK into a power and was the first grand dragon,” Sanders said. “They hung and killed black folks for a century and a half.” “If they’re going to have a statue of him, they ought to buy land other than city owned land,” Sanders said.

According to the Selma Times-Journal, the city council on Tuesday night approved a settlement of a lawsuit involving the monument. The settlement called for, among other things, giving a deed to the one-acre site at the cemetery with the Forrest monument to Chapter 53 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy but not allowing original plans to build a taller structure.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Wal–Mart gives original Orange site to state

FROM STAFF REPORTS

Wal–Mart has given the state more than 50 acres near Wilderness battlefield at the site where it originally planned to build a Supercenter in Orange County, Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Friday.“We are delighted by this generous and voluntary gift from Wal–Mart,” McDonnell said in a news release. “It’s another demonstration of Wal–Mart’s role as a good and positive corporate citizen in Virginia, whose presence here serves long-range goals for our vitality.” The retail giant in 2011 abandoned its plans to build on the property near the intersection of State Routes 3 and 20 amid complaints from preservationists and a lawsuit challenging the county’s approval of a special-use permit for the retail giant. The original site was about a quarter-mile north of the entrance to Wilderness battlefield area of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. Wal–Mart eventually settled on a site off Route 3 about 4 miles to the west, where it opened a store in July. Henry Jordan, a senior vice president for Eastern Seaboard Wal–Mart, said he was pleased the company was able to find a home in the county and donate land for historic preservation. “In this way, we have been able to give back to the community and serve the needs of our customers,” he said in a statement. Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources will oversee the donated land and protect it from development. Department Director Kathleen S. Kilpatrick called it a “wonderful legacy gift” and noted that it comes during the midpoint of the Civil War sesquicentennial. “We look forward to working with community leaders to steward the property and realize its potential for public benefit,” she stated. Jim Lighthizer, president of the Civil War Trust, called the donation an “important milestone in the protection of battlefield lands. With this donation, Wal–Mart successfully fulfills the commitment made in 2011 to choose an alternate site and work to set aside the original location,” he said. House Speaker Bill Howell of Stafford County, chairman of the state’s Sesquicentennial Commission, thanked Wal–Mart for donating the land. “The Civil War is an important part of Virginia’s history,” he said. “This donation will allow for the preservation of these historic lands for future generations.” http://news.fredericksburg.com/newsdesk/2013/11/08/wal-mart-gives-original-orange-site-to-state/

Home of Confederate Hero struggles to stay open

By Linda Wheeler

The Sam Davis Home in Smyrna, Tenn., is trying to survive financially as it approaches a sesquicentennial commemoration this month of the death of one of the South’s favorite martyrs.
Davis refused to name names after he was captured carrying stolen Union documents and dramatically chose a death by hanging over betraying his friends.

Davis’s heroic act will be remembered at the pillared, two-story house and museum over a three-day weekend, Nov. 22 to 24.

The state-owned Davis home, run on an annual $200,000 budget, has long been supported by the town, but that contribution has been slashed by 60 percent over the past seven years. In response, the museum has reduced hours and recently decided to close for the month of January.

The commemoration is taking place on the weekend before the actual anniversary date of Davis’s death on Nov. 27, 1863, and officials are hopeful it will bring in much-needed money and a new base of support. They are planning for a crowd of as many as 100,000.

Events include a bus trip to Nashville to see the Davis memorial on the capital grounds, a banquet with keynote speaker, a guided tour of the home, performance of a play about Davis, a Sam Davis Memorial Ball and a Sunday morning service at Davis’s grave. Of particular interest to Davis fans will be an exhibit of artifacts loaned to the museum for the event that include the shackles Davis wore as a prisoner as well as the overcoat and one of the boots he was wearing when captured.

Davis left school to join the 1st Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, and by 1863 had been recruited to work as a scout, disrupting Union communications and reporting on troop movements. He was working behind enemy lines when he was captured carrying stolen papers and a map of fortifications. Although he said he was a mere courier, Union officials decided he was a spy. He refused to say who had given him the documents, was tried by court martial and sentenced to be hanged. When given a last chance to save himself by identifying those who had helped him, he refused, reportedly saying “You may hang me a thousand times and I would not betray my friends.”

His story had a powerful appeal and overnight Davis became the “Boy Hero of the Confederacy,” although he was 21 when he died.

2 Civil War museums in Virginia team up for new center

Published November 17, 2013

Associated Press

Christy Coleman, left, director of the American Civil War Center at Tredegar Iron Works, left, and Waite Rawls of the Museum of the Confederacy, pose in front of the ruins of the old Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Va., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

RICHMOND, Va. – One museum has among its vast Confederate-centric collection Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's sword and the flag that flew at Robert E. Lee's headquarters. The other museum strives to tell the story of the Civil War through the eyes of Northerners and Southerners, freed and enslaved blacks, soldiers and civilians.

Now the Museum of the Confederacy and the American Civil War Center are joining forces to build a $30 million museum in Richmond with the goal of creating the top Civil War museum in the nation 150 years after the deadliest conflict fought on U.S. soil.

The marriage of museums, announced to The Associated Press, will meld the collection of Confederate battle flags, uniforms, weapons and other historic relics with a narrative-based museum that uses bold, interactive exhibits and living history events to relate its 360-degree telling of the war.
What some might view as an unlikely partnership "makes so much sense" to Christy Coleman, president of the American Civil War Center, which opened in 2000 at a site where the new museum will rise.

"That's part of the point," Coleman said in an interview with The Associated Press. "They have an incredible collection that is absolutely Confederate strong, but there are a lot of artifacts that have not been able to be fully explored or used to relate to the African-American experience or immigrants or the role of Jews."

"The idea is to create experiences for our guests that are really different so they can understand the conflict more deeply."

- Christy Coleman, president of the American Civil War Center

Coleman said the Confederacy museum's collection will complement her museum's mission of looking at the social and political stories of the Civil War. "The combination of that is what makes this so exciting to us," she said.

In a joint announcement, the museums said the new historic attraction in the former capital of the Confederacy has yet to be named, but $20 million has been committed to its construction. Ground will be broken in 2014, with an expected opening the following year.

The new museum will be located along the James River, at the Tredegar Ironworks, where much of the South's cannons were forged during the war. It's also the home of the Civil War Center. The museums said bringing together both institutions will "further establish Richmond as the foremost Civil War destination in the United States."

Richmond continues to draw from its past to bring tourists to the city. Efforts include the creation of a Slave Trail tracing the city's past as a lucrative center in the commerce of enslaved people to a more contemporary narrative offering tours that highlight the Thomas Jefferson-designed Capitol and other central Virginia locations used in Steven Spielberg's film "Lincoln."

At the new attraction, Coleman will share the title of CEO with Waite Rawls, president of the Confederacy museum. It dates to 1890 and traces the origins of much of its collections to the men who fought for the South and their descendants, in particular Lee and other Southern military leaders. The museums have collaborated in the past, Rawls said the merger is "a natural evolution of that relationship."

The Museum of the Confederacy claims the world's largest and most comprehensive collection of Confederate artifacts: thousands of carefully preserved battle flags, dolls used to smuggle medicine to troops, Jackson's sword. Only a fraction of the collection is on display at the museum's downtown Richmond site, next to the former White House of the Confederacy.

While the Civil War Sesquicentennial has drawn visitors to the museum, overall it has seen a sharp decline in attendance through the years as the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center and related facilities have grown around it, enveloping both buildings. Finding the museum can be a challenge even for city residents.

The James River location for the new attraction, a little more than 1 mile from Museum of the Confederacy, offers a more expansive and accessible site. It's also home to the National Park Service's Richmond Visitor Center, already is a popular destination for Civil War buffs. Concerts and other events also draw city-dwellers and tourists to the grassy grounds along the river.
"The ability to attract a much bigger audience and really stake the claim that Richmond is the premier museum experience for the Civil War -- this is a tremendous opportunity for us," Rawls said.
Rawls agreed with Coleman that the combined museums will build on each other's mission.
"Their strength is their site at the Ironworks and their access to the river and their room for living history," he said. "Ours is our collection."

For his part, Richmond National Battlefield Park superintendent Dave Ruth welcomes the new collaboration along the James. The new museum, he said, "will define how visitors experience the dramatic story of the Civil War and will communicate the powerful and untold stories that provide transcendent meaning for this event, which shaped our country's history."

Coleman could barely contain her enthusiasm as she offered a sneak peak at some of the future exhibits at the yet-unnamed museum, including a look at the extraordinary growth of Richmond as the Confederate capital. "The idea is to create experiences for our guests that are really different so they can understand the conflict more deeply," she said. "It's really exciting."

The spark: Selma Police Department’s Sgt. Tori Neely dusts for prints in March 2012 after the bronze bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest was stolen from the monument that is placed in Old Live Oak Cemetery. This theft is what led to monument sponsors to lead efforts to build a bigger monument, which drew protests and ultimately led to a lawsuit after the city of Selma shut down construction efforts. -- File Photo

In a 5-3 vote, the Selma City Council voted to approve a settlement in a lawsuit over a monument to Confederate general and former Klu Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, effectively ending the suit.

The settlement terms include giving a deed to the one-acre tract of land containing the monument in Old Live Oak Cemetery to Chapter 53 of the United Daughters of Confederacy. Other terms include allowing KTK Mining to replace the bronze bust of Forrest, but not allowing the original plans to construct a taller structure; installing cameras and lighting for security; making the circle handicap accessible; placing a cannon on a pedestal previously intended to raise the monument’s height and paying a total of $100,000 to KTK Mining for a violation of the company’s due process rights.
The city’s liability insurance will pay $50,000 of the damages. The other $50,000 will be taken from a fund set up to receive a half-cent sales tax, passed earlier this year. The fund currently contains $74,686.

Before voting in favor of the settlement, council president Corey Bowie said it was time for the city to move forward and focus on more important issues plaguing Selma. “We have to look at the bigger picture,” Bowie said. “We are going to have to embrace both the civil war and the civil rights movement as part of our city’s history. Once we can appreciate both ends then we can move past this.”

Randolph said he felt the city was giving up too much in the settlement. “We are giving them a deed to the land and $50,000 and I just think that is too much,” he said.

With the settlement approved, city attorney Jimmy Nunn said the lawsuit is effectively over.
Had the settlement not been approved, Nunn said the city faced much larger consequences, including paying nearly $300,000 in attorney’s fees.

The lawsuit began when the city suspended KTK mining’s construction permit on Sept. 25, 2012 after questions were raised about who owned Confederate Circle.

The monument was originally unveiled in 2000 at the Vaughan-Smitherman Museum. It was moved to the cemetery after the monument was vandalized.

In March 2012, the monument’s bronze bust was stolen, leading to the group Friends of Forrest developing plans for relocation. Protests began again around the monument months after construction began. Shortly after the protests began city council members suspended the permit.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

School Bans Student From Flying Confederate Flag On Truck

November 24, 2013 10:05 AM

GOODYEAR, Ariz. (CBS Las Vegas) — A student has been banned from displaying the Confederate flag on his truck while on school grounds.
Jacob Green, a junior at Millennium High School in Goodyear, Ariz., told KSAZ-TV that he had no problem flying the Confederate flag on his truck while driving to school until he was confronted by another student two weeks ago.

“I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve flown a flag on my truck. Somebody fought me because of it,” Green told KSAZ. “I didn’t fight him. I was walking around like a normal person. He confronted me, he hit me first. I was defending myself.”

Green and the other student were both suspended for five days following the fight.Green, who says he is not a racist, believes the Confederate flag means freedom.The flag means basically more independence, less government,” Green told KSAZ. “It didn’t mean racism, it didn’t mean slavery, it didn’t mean any of that. It basically meant what they were fighting for was their right to be independent and not have the government control them.” The school district called the flag offensive and said schools can limit students’ rights while they are on campus. “It has been proven to be patently offensive to certain groups and the courts recognize that,” Dennis Runyan, superintendent for the Agua Fria Unified School District, told KSAZ. “Obviously there was some event that took place it was related to reaction to the flag and it did create an environment where it was disruptive.”

Green said he will not let the school force him to take the flag off his car. “I’m not going to take the flag off my truck for somebody telling me to do it. I believe in independence. That’s something I want to do independently,” he told KSAZ.

Green’s parents believe the attack against their son was a hate crime and say he should be allowed to fly the flag on his vehicle at school.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

As we move through the challenging years of the
Sesquicentennial, leadership training has become even more important to the defense
of our Southern heritage. In an effort to insure that our members better
understand the challenges of leadership roles and to aid our leaders in
acquiring the knowledge to better perform their duties, the SCV has scheduled an
Advent Season National Leadership Workshop.

This year’s event
will be held December 14, 2013 at the Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis Southeast 5302 Victory
Drive Indianapolis, Indiana 46203. It will be hosted by the Indiana Division.A tentative schedule for the day is posted
below along with registration and lodging information.

Please note that this event will
include relevant presentations and individual workshops for more specialized
training for Commanders and Adjutants; however, ALL members are invited to
attend!

Registration, is only $12 each and will
be handled through our General Headquarters at Elm SpringsYou may mail a reservation with a check or call
1 (800) 380-1896 ext 209 (Cindy) with credit card information (MC, VISA or
AMEX).

Piece of Civil War ironclad brought to surface in Savannah

Warship remains retrieved from river

She was scuttled rather than left to fall into Union hands during the war

Now the ironclad must be moved so a shipping channel can be deepened

(CNN) -- She didn't have enough power to maneuver and effectively trade artillery rounds with enemy vessels in the swift Savannah River. Instead, the locally produced CSS Georgia, a one-of-a-kind ironclad produced for the Confederacy during the Civil War, became a stationary floating battery, bristling with artillery pieces.She did her job.

The Yankees, intent on taking Savannah, Georgia, refused to take on the CSS Georgia or other nearby defense obstructions. The CSS Georgia won the battle, but lost the war: The vessel was scuttled in December 1864 shortly before Union forces took Savannah and presented the city to President Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas present. The shipwreck has rested in the murky river since, rarely disturbed and having weathered the indignity of being hit during dredging a couple of times over the years.

This week, U.S. Navy divers, working with archaeologists for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, retrieved a 64-square-foot section of the ironclad, a precursor to the long-anticipated removal and preservation of the shipwreck so the city's vital shipping channel can be deepened.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist Julie Morgan next to the 5,000-pound piece of the ironclad.

The Corps expects to spend an estimated $9.5 million on the project. The removal is expected to begin in summer 2014, although funding has not been finalized. "Over time the ship's casemate, the iron-covered upper portion of the warship, came apart," the Corps' Savannah District said in a statement Wednesday. "The small portion removed Tuesday will give archaeologists the ability to assess the condition of the remainder of the ship."

That remainder includes remaining cannon, pieces of the ship's power plant and propeller shaft and two chunks of the casemate.

Officials are excited because the recovery of the casemates -- the compartments where artillery pieces were housed -- is believed to be the first of a Confederate ironclad. One of the surviving casemates is huge: 68 feet by 24 feet.

Divers, who have only a few feet of visibility, have been assessing the CSS Georgia wreck, so they know what they will be facing next summer. The site is adjacent to Old Fort Jackson and the main shipping channel. "This is just a small section. It was not cut off," Corps public affairs specialist Sandra Hudson said of the piece recovered Tuesday. "It was a small piece they found that would be the most viable to pull up."

Divers and this vessel were part of salvage operations in the swift Savannah River.

Archaeologists have the challenge of preserving the CSS Georgia through chemical and other means, making her iron stable so that the remains one day can be displayed in museums.

This 5,000-pound chunk of casemate, lifted by crane onto a barge, is being sent to Texas A&M University for archaeological testing, Hudson said.

The remains of the CSS Georgia may answer some mysteries, including its dimensions and the manner of construction. The casemates were made of railroad iron. The vessel could handle 10 guns, though fewer were onboard when it was destroyed.

There are no known blueprints for the ironclad, which was produced in Savannah in 1862 as part of a defensive naval squadron. Its wreckage straddles the borders of Georgia and South Carolina.

According to the Corps, Savannah's harbor will be deepened from 42 feet to 47 feet, "greatly expanding its capability to handle larger cargo vessels."

The ongoing expansion of the Panama Canal means bigger ships will need deeper water at ports around the United States. If things go as planned, the remains of the CSS Georgia and associated artifacts will be on the surface before the 150th anniversary of its sinking.

Museum of the Confederacy to merge with American Civil War Center

Christy Coleman (left) of the American Civil War Center and Waite Rawls of the Museum of the Confederacy, near the museum buildings at Tredegar. The American Civil War Center and the Museum of the Confederacy have announced that they will increase their collaboration. Nov. 15, 2013.

The world’s premier collection of Confederate artifacts at the Museum of the Confederacy and the city’s premier waterfront location at the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar are combining in a new Richmond museum.S. Waite Rawls III, president and CEO of the Museum of the Confederacy, and Christy Coleman, president of the American Civil War Center, will be co-leaders of the new organization, whose name will be chosen with guidance from national and local research.

Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond and a Civil War scholar who sits on the board of both institutions, will be chairman of the combined board. “I think it’s going to be a great thing for the city, it’s going to be a great thing for people who care about the Civil War and it’s going to be a great thing for people who care about the mission of both institutions, which will be able to be sustained,” Ayers said.

“You have the best collection of Confederate materials in the world and now you’ll have it in a place where they can actually be displayed and esteemed probably more than ever.”

More than $20 million has already been committed to the $30 million project, Coleman said. A new building at Tredegar will have more than 30,000 square feet of space for exhibitions and an experiential theater portraying the fire that destroyed much of the city at the end of the war.

Baskervill, the local architectural firm that’s also developed proposals for a slavery museum in Shockoe Bottom, will present concepts for the Tredegar site in mid-December, Coleman said — “what it looks like and where it fits best on the property without interrupting our views or space for programs.” The goal is to open in fall 2015.

The White House of the Confederacy, at 1201 E. Clay St. — which is part of the Museum of the Confederacy — will continue to tell the story of Jefferson Davis and his family from 1861 to 1865 while he served as president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

Enhanced exhibits on the ground floor of the White House will open in space that’s no longer needed for staff areas and storage. The adjacent Museum of the Confederacy building, which opened in 1976, will retain its gift shop and classrooms, but the exhibit space will be free for other uses.

Discussions are underway with the Virginia Historical Society to preserve and digitize the letters, diaries, books and photographs in the Museum of the Confederacy’s collection through an intellectual property licensing agreement.

The National Park Service visitor center and battlefield orientation will continue in the building it leases at Tredegar. Shuttles between the sites are a possibility in conjunction with the city or other organizations. “I think this moves us from trying to survive to trying to excel,” Rawls said.

Attendance at the Museum of the Confederacy slid from a high of 92,000 in the early 1990s to 44,000 in 2010 as perpetual construction and congestion at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center made it hard for visitors to get there. The 150th anniversary of the Civil War has boosted Richmond attendance to 56,000 or more for the past three years, and an expansion to its Appomattox facility in 2012 also brought 30,000 new visitors.

The new Richmond museum will have “the financial resources to display better, display more, display more accessibly,” Rawls said. “The immersion theater will be a major addition. All of that puts us in a position of being the biggest and best with the best technology.”

When he imagines the new facility, Rawls draws inspiration from museum facilities across the state, including his own new building at Appomattox and Pamplin Historical Park near Petersburg.

“It’ll have the richness of artifacts of Appomattox,” he said. “It’ll have some of the interactive capabilities of Pamplin” and details from places like the Newseum and the Spy Museum in Washington. The setting on Richmond’s riverfront will contribute to the appeal in a similar way to the Potomac River at Mount Vernon and the mountaintop at Monticello.

The museum’s collection will benefit from state-of-the-art preservation and presentation in the new facility. “So much is not on display or is displayed in 40-year-old technology,” Rawls said. “You look for anything interactive and you don’t find it. You look for modern exhibit cases and you don’t find it. You look for parking space and you don’t find that either.

“To display this collection and store it and preserve it in much better fashion is fabulous for us.”

The Museum of the Confederacy has about 15,000 items in its collection, Rawls said. It opened in 1896 in the house that had been the Confederacy’s executive mansion during the war. After the collections had been moved into the new museum building, the White House was restored and reopened as a home in 1988. A third museum site at Appomattox opened in 2012.

The Civil War Center has about 3,000 items in its collection, Coleman said. When it opened in 2006, the idea was to be a programmatic institution and not a collecting institution. “One of the things that struck us hard during this whole Sesquicentennial,” she said, “even though we’ve been able to do some nice programming … we have relied heavily on private donors and other institutional donors, and during the Sesquicentennial, of course, everybody pulled their stuff back. Our exhibits started getting really bare. That’s a disadvantage of being a young institution in an old subject. There’s not a lot left out there for us.”

Richmond’s love-hate relationship with its prominence as capital of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War has long created divisions on how to tell the story of that period.

The Museum of the Confederacy has focused on the Southern states that seceded during the Civil War. The American Civil War Center has looked at the issues from three perspectives: Northern, Southern and African-American.

Rumors of an enhanced relationship or merger between the Museum of the Confederacy and Civil War Center produced protests from some people in Confederate heritage organizations during the summer.

Members of the Virginia Flaggers group carried Confederate flags several days at the Museum of the Confederacy and wrote blog posts “calling on ALL Confederates to contact the Museum Board” to request that Rawls be removed, that any merger plans be terminated and “that the museum return to its original intent … to perpetuate the honor of the Confederate Soldier by preserving the record of his valor.”

The Sons of Confederate Veterans posted a letter from SCV member Lt. Col. Mike Landree, who was serving in Afghanistan, saying that the museum should return artifacts to descendants of families rather than send them to other institutions.

Coleman and Rawls see the mission of the new museum as telling Richmond’s wartime story in all its complexity. “I think the point is that the American experience was shaped by the Civil War,” Rawls said. “You cannot understand America unless you understand the Civil War. You cannot understand the Civil War unless you understand the Confederacy. So if you’re trying to say what is the American experience, the Confederacy is part of it.”

“I would say it’s giving it the breadth and scope that the war really had,” Coleman said. “This isn’t solely one story or another. This isn’t the co-opting of one story or another. This is our earnest attempt to make sure that the fullness of this is told. “It’s too important to be one size fits all, or one story fits all, or one story is right and one story is wrong. The naysayers at this point have been saying no because they haven’t fully understood what we were trying to do.”

Focus groups locally and nationally, as well as other research, are being coordinated by Edelman Berland in Washington. The firm will also help with selection of a name.

Response in the groups and in one-on-one conversations with major supporters of each institution has been positive, the museum leaders said. Rawls said reactions one-on-one have ranged from “it’s about time” to “this will be wonderful for Richmond.”

He sees the change as a natural transition for a museum that began as a shrine to Confederates and developed into a modern educational institution. “This is just the next step in a 120-year evolutionary process,” he said. “Hopefully that’s what you’re supposed to do rather than stick a fork in the ground and say we’re going to stay like this forever.”

Saturday, November 9, 2013

NEW ORLEANS — A group that petitioned for a customized Texas license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag on Wednesday urged a federal appeals court to revive its lawsuit against the state officials who rejected the design.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals didn't indicate how soon it would rule after hearing arguments on both sides of the dispute.

The Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans sued members of the state Department of Motor Vehicles Board in 2011 after they denied its application for a specialty plate.
The group says its design honors the memory of Confederate soldiers and represents Southern heritage, but the board concluded it would offend many residents who believe the flag is a racially charged symbol of repression.

John McConnell, a lawyer for the nonprofit group, said the board engaged in "viewpoint discrimination" that trampled on his client's First Amendment right to freedom of expression.
"Obviously, there is a debate over what the meaning of the Confederate battle flag is," McConnell said. "The state cannot enter the debate and silence one point of view and endorse the views of others."

US District Judge Sam Sparks dismissed the group's lawsuit in April, ruling the First Amendment doesn't require the state to place the flag on government-controlled property.

Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell denied that the board discriminated against the group. Mitchell said the "government-speech doctrine" allows the state to pick and choose which messages and symbols appear on the state-issued plates.

If the board was required to maintain "viewpoint neutrality," its members would have to issue specialty plates to anyone who applied for one or else scrap the program altogether, Mitchell argued.
"There's no way to issue a specialty plate without favoring one viewpoint over another," he said.
5th Circuit Judge Jerry Smith asked McConnell why the design of customized plates wouldn't be protected government speech. McConnell said Texas has authorized roughly 300 specialty plates for a wide variety of groups, including some with overtly religious symbols. When drivers spend extra money to get customized plates, it's a form of personal expression, he argued.

"In this case, there is a real message that is expressed by the Confederate flag," McConnell said.
The board received hundreds of comments opposed to the group's design and heard objections from elected officials, clergy members, NAACP members and other critics during a November 2011 board meeting.

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod asked Mitchell if the board bases its decisions on the prevailing opinions expressed by the public during its meetings.
"It's dependent on the board's judgment," Mitchell said.

McConnell argued that speech can't be restricted simply because it might offend somebody.
"There's a real problem with defining what level of offensiveness would matter here," he said.
In a court filing, lawyers for the Sons of Confederate Veterans said the group currently has specialty license plates featuring the Confederate flag available in Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Maryland, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Elrod asked Mitchell whether Texas is "out of step" with other states on the issue.
Mitchell said it's difficult to answer that question, but "some of them were done under court orders and some of them were done under the specter of threatened litigation."

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

As we move through the challenging years of the Sesquicentennial, leadership training has become even more important to the defense of our Southern heritage. In an effort to insure that our members better understand the challenges of leadership roles and to aid our leaders in acquiring the knowledge to better perform their duties, the SCV has scheduled an ATM Autumn National Leadership Workshop.

This year’s event will be held November 16, 2013 at the Alexander Majors Historic Home and Museum 8201 State Line Road in Kansas City, Missouri. It will be hosted by the Major Thomas J. Key Camp 1920 Kansas Division. A tentative schedule for the day is posted below along with registration and lodging information.

Please note that this event will include relevant presentations and individual workshops for more specialized training for Commanders and Adjutants; however, ALL members are invited to attend!

___________________________________

8:30 – 8:40 Welcome & SCV Protocol Cmdr. Spike Speicher

8:40 – 8:55 Introductions & Overview Lt. CIC Charles Kelly Barrow

8:55 – 9:40 Commanders & Command CIC R. Michael Givens

9:40 – 9:50 BREAK

9:50 – 10:30 Adjutants & Administration AIC Stephen Lee Ritchie

10:30 -10:45 BREAK

10:45 – 11:30 Recruiting & Retention Lt. CIC Charles Kelly Barrow

11:30 – 12:30 DINNER

12:30 – 1:15 Vision 2016 Vision 2016 Coordinator Tom Hiter, Ph.D

1:15 – 1:25 BREAK

1:25 – 2:10 Camp Operations & Success AIC Stephen Lee Ritchie

2:10 – 2:20 BREAK

2:20 – 3:05 Commander’s & Adjutant’s Workshops CIC, Lt. CIC & AIC

3:05 Concluding Remarks & Discussion Lt. CIC Charles Kelly Barrow

Benediction

Registration is only $10 each and will be handled through our General Headquarters at Elm Springs. You may mail a reservation with a check or call 1 (800) 380-1896 ext 209 (Cindy) with credit card information (MC, VISA or AMEX).